Notes after first Upgrade from SP2010 to 2013 preview

Ohh... as and when a new SharePoint version releases - techies like us will be asked to think and act on upgrade. Now its from SP2010 to SP2013 - I m just done with the first candidate upgrade from SP2010 to Sp2013. As most of us guessed, Database attach is the only method supported by SharePoint team right now. As we all aware this is a costly option where we will upgrade the data and sites on a separate farm from the source. 

Before the upgrade, it is recommended to gather info from the source farm (SP2010) - settings like AAM, Auth Providers and Auth Modes, Quota Templates, Managed Paths, Se;f Service Site Mgmt, email settings, custom components (WSPs etc) Certificates. environment info like - sites list, DB details and number of users. It is also recomended to do a clean up to eliminate poential upgrade errors, major clean up activities are to check and repair all DB consistency errors and turning off Web Analytics service application.

To proceed with database attach upgrade, a new farm should be available and the usual SP2013 setup steps should be employed to setup that. Let me refresh the steps in high level

1. Install software - DB server (SQL Server 2008 R2 or SQL Server 2012), Web / App Server - SP2013 prerequisites and SP2013 product
2. Run config wizard in   Web / App Servers
3. Do not use config wizard to configure setup BCS, MMS, PPS, Search, Secure Store, UPS. We willl do it as part of upgrade

Once the environment is setup properly, copy the following DBs to new environment

• Site Content DBs
• BCS DB
• MMS DB
• PPS DB
• Secure Store DB
• Search DB
• UPS DBs (profile, social, sync)

Note: You may set the DBs read only if you wish to restrict changes in source DBs

Next step is to upgrade service applications using the existing DBs and creating service app proxies using Powershell cmdlets like
New-SPProfileServiceApplication (Adds a User Profile Service application to a farm.)
New-SPProfileServiceApplicationProxy (Creates a User Profile Service application proxy on the local farm.)

Note: Please refer MSDN for full set of cmdlets @ technet

Now we can create and configure web applications, deploy customizations like wsps, site defs, CSS, web parts, web services, features, assemblies and web.config changes, form templates et al. No ned to create site collections since it will be created automatically when we upgrade content DB.

Make sure you are running Test-SpContentDatabase cmdlet before proceed with the next ste which is the Content DB upgrade. This step will verify the new environment has all of the components we need before we actually upgrade the DB.

Use Mount-ContentDatabase cmdlet to upgrade the DB. Note that this wont upgrade UI for the sites contained ion the DB.

Once the DBs are upgraded, site coll admins can upgrade their sites. I recomemnd the following steps for this

1. Run site collection health  checks  to identify and address potential issues in their site collections.
2. Optionally create an upgrade evaluation site collection. This will allow us to preview the new UI and address issues before actual upgrade.
3. Finally the Actual upgrade

You are all set to use the first upgraded SP2013 site!!!!